Got interviewed for TV - again

I gotta admit that being interviewed for TV for the second time was a lot more comfortable than the first time. Rashmi Bansal who is the Consulting Editor at UTVi for the program "Cracking Careers" asked me if I was willing to answer some questions on why long distance MBA programs don't get the equal treatment by industry as full-time MBAs.

Tune into the program - and I'll keep you updated when that happens - to find out what I think.

Building HR Competencies

Often HR professionals are forced to make a choice - specially if they are employed in large organizations. They have to make a choice if they want to be a Generalist or a Specialist. If they choose to be a Specialist they have to make further choices - OD/Training, HRIS, Compensation and Benefits or Recruitment?

I've often felt that such decisions can go either way. A person might get stuck in a role that does not suit his/her profile, and it perpetuates unless one is very lucky to get an employer who shuffles you in different HR roles.

That's why I was pleasantly surprised when I interacted with HR folks of a client organization. They have a primary responsibility - like Employee Relations or Recruitment, and in addition to that they can take an additional reduced role. So, for example, the HR Operations person was interfacing with me as the Training Co-ordinator for a particular Training Program being rolled out for a year, and she was responsible right from interacting and briefing me to helping me with design of the program to getting nominations for the training and post program follow up.

Wouldn't it be great if most organizations introduced HR roles with a primary and a secondary responsibility? It would reduce the blame game within HR as well as build more 'well-rounded' HR professionals.


Checkout sales jobs in Chicago at ChicagoJobs.com.

The List of Small and Medium Management Consulting firms in India

People keep asking me if I know which are the small HR Consulting firms that they can turn to in a particular city in India. And the names that I tell them are usually those that I know, or which have been started by friends, or where I know someone.So, I tell myself today "Self, wouldn't it be great if there was a list of small and medium sized management consulting firms of India somewhere on the internet?"And then it occured to me "Hey, why don't I build one?"So here it is folks!If you know of one which should be in the list, leave a comment below and I shall check it out. Feel free to update me about the new locations etc where it operates in.The definition of 'small and medium' is a subjective one.
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Strategy and OD Consulting Firms
Vnvision - Located in Hyderabad - Website
Excalibre - Located in Noida - Blog
Avalon Consulting - Located in Mumbai - Website
Universal Consulting - Located in Mumbai - Website
Technology Network (India) Pvt Ltd - Located in Pune - Website
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HR Consulting Firms

Cocoon Consulting - Located in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi - Website

Vyaktitva - Located in Delhi - Website

Tvarita Consulting - Located in Hyderabad and Chennai - Website and Blog

The HR Practice - Located in Bangalore - Website

HR Solutions - Located in Pune - Linkedin Profile of Founder

HuSys Consulting - Located in Hyderabad - Website

Vistas Consulting - Located in Bangalore - Website

Valulead Consulting - Located in Bangalore - Linkedin Profile of Founder

HR Footprints - Located in Hyderabad - Website

Potentia - Located in Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata - Website

Noam Management Consulting - Located in Delhi - Website

GrayMatters - Located in Kolkata - Website

Business Fundamental Consulting - Located in Bangalore - Website

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Training and Facilitation Firms

Eternale Learning - Located in Pune - Website

Pegasus Institute for Excellence - Located in Bangalore - Website

Pragati Learning - Located in Pune -

iDiscoveri - Located in Delhi and Bangalore - Website

Whittlesticks - Website

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General Management Consulting Firms

Positron Services - Located in Delhi and Mumbai - Website

Saita Consulting - Located in Delhi - Website

Renoir Consulting - Website

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Marketing Consulting Firms

[Suggestions Wanted]

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Financial Consulting Firms

[Suggestions Wanted]

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Innovation Consulting Firms

Erehwon Innovation Consulting - Located in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi - Website

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CSR Consulting Firms

Aditya Vidyasagar - Located in Lucknow - Email

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Operations Management Consulting Firms

Alvis Industries Pvt Ltd - Located in Chennai - Email

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Quality Consulting Firms

Parag Kumar - Located in NCR Region - Email

Suggest other categories either by email or by leaving a comment below

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The Carnival of HR

The Evil HR lady hosts the latest HR Blog carnival where she's looking for a reason to fire people and be fired.

Go ahead. 

Read it.

I know you want to.

You don't?

You're fired!

The Long Tail - Implications for HR and Consulting

Yes, I’ve been reading the Long Tail by Chris Anderson and thinking about it. Well actually I read it for about 2 days and I’ve been thinking about the various implications about it. It also reminded me of a book written in the early 70s – Positioning. Yes, the same marketing breakthrough that Ries and Trout put together.

 

But back to the Long Tail.

 

The premise of the book is simple. The era of big hits is over in many industries. Economic necessity and physical space limited choice of the niche and the super-niche. Which is why the big hits were popular. And people connected with each other over the shared experience of the big hit.

 

Now however, the cost of carrying the niche is dropping. Anderson quotes examples like Amazon, eBay, iTunes to buttress the point that pure digital content is ensuring that the author who sells less than a thousand books is also listed along with an author who sells in the hundred thousands.

 

Anderson also takes the Wikipedia example, and says that as we move more and more into the probabilistic age, we will find more and more things to debate and get uncomfortable with. More here http://www.thelongtail.com/the_long_tail/2005/12/the_probabilist.html

 

However as Organizational Consultants and HR people we know that human systems are probabilistic too and there are no ‘right/wrong’ ways to take decisions. Cognitively. Yet we keep searching for the A list player who will walk in and rescue the day. Something tells me that in the emerging world of work, when consultants and free agents are going to form more and more of your ‘productive’ workforce, the efforts of work will also go the long tail way.

 

As HR people are we concentrating on the tail at all?

 

Maybe not.

 

Do we have to as the tail will keep getting fatter? Of course, but we still don’t know how.

 

Of course, one may reason that in a truly virtual enterprise like Wikipedia there are no HR people. There are moderators however who stick to the big rules of the system.

 

In an ideal workplace you would not have the need for HR people. People would take ownership for hiring and training their team members and developing them. A self organizing system would self-correct too, and while it might look chaotic it would work.

 

As HR people and Organizational Consultants what can we do to help our people transition and make sense of this age?

 

 

 

 

 

What are Consulting Skills?

Lot of people ask me "Hey I am great at HR/Finance/IT. I love solving problems, and I like working with people. would that be enough to make me a consultant?"

Er, you already are a consultant - even when you think you are not!

Goes specially for internal support functions. If you are not earning the moolah in a business then you are seeking to use indirect influence on how someone brings in the moolah - ergo, consultant.

So what are the prime skills of being a consultant or an internal service provider.

Most important - Contracting. Knowing the scope of your work and what your client expects is the biggest skill you can build. It means being truthful about your abilities and also how it makes sense for the client. People don't want scope creep to happen. Contracting needs patience, communication and assertiveness skills. It might also mean walking away from a lucrative deal - so it also needs courage. The failure of most sunk consulting projects can be traced back to this phase of the consulting engagement.

Discovery - Diagnosis calls for a skill where you play detective. Not to make your own conclusions after listening to everyone's point of view (including your own!) is a skill that tough to master. But discovery is a key skill to keep a conultant objective and not to jump to 'obvious' conclusions.

Implementation - For different kinds of consultants, implementation looks different. However the key skill in implementation is making the implementation survive your own departure. How you do that either as an external consultant or as an internal one is key. It most of the time means building skills in the client organization that might impact your recall for the same project but will add a lot of value to you.

I learnt these skills in the Designed learning program I participated some years ago. I like to keep going back to them to refresh them, and this post was triggered by Wench's post.

Bemused

Why does the SHRM conference in the US have Sidney Poitier and Lionel Richie addressing HR folks?

US HR types, what the heck's happening? If "SHRM is the voice of a profession" as Ulrich claimed, I sure don't like the way the voice sounds - even if Sidney Poitier sounds great! Lionel was never my fave singer :P

Let me guess - US HR folks are bored of listening to Dave Ulrich and Wayne Brockbank and Peter Capelli is busy in India.

Thank goodness, the NHRD hasn't asked Navin Nischol to be a keynote speaker.

Yet.

Shudder!

How to make a Talent Strategy

I've been reading Made to Stick by the brothers Heath and one point struck me in the book. In the book they quote Antoine de Saint Exupéry on design :  You know you've achieved perfection in design, Not when you have nothing more to add, But when you have nothing more to take away.

Brilliant! What a thought. The Heath guys link that thought to an idea's core principle. 

That's what I've been thinking too.

When you stike away all the wishy-washy vision and mission statements, when you remove all the fluff, when you un-layer all the layers your organization has put on itself all these years - what are you left with with? Or are you left with anything at all?

Hopefully what you will be left looking at - will be the core of your business. The one thing that guides the decision making efforts of all people in the organization. The book gives the example of Southwest - "THE low cost airline" Then there are the other layers around it "It's great to have fun at work", but not at the cost of the core strategy, not by spending money and messing it up.

So that's the link for HR folks. To know what should your talent strategy be - ask if you understand the strategic core of your business. Are you into producing the best designed watches or the best selling ones? The first makes designers center piece of your talent strategy, the second places branding and marketing and sales in the foreground.

So let's say it in plain English - your talent strategy has to reflect your business strategy. Understand that and the rest will follow.

5 skills for Career Success

During a workshop recently when we were talking about what the factors would be that people need to build to achieve career success, this is what we came up with:

1. Problem Solving: We all know that organizational life is full of frustrations and constraints. What we don't need is another co-worker pointing out what is wrong. Someone who can solve problems would be a great person to have around. Can you solve problems? Would you be a person managers would fight to have on their teams?
2. Ideas: This is linked to problem solving, but can happen even when there is no apparent problem. A person who can generate ideas and look with new perspectives would always be an asset. If these ideas lead to doing more with less, or to get additional business then you'll always be in demand.
3. Initiative: Every manager looks for the employee who puts his hand up and says "I'll do it." Or just rolls up his sleeve and gets down to doing it. Do you have it in you?
4. Cheerful: I could have said a positive disposition, but I've been reading Lucy Kellaway so I'll stick to normal english. Do you create a buzz and lively environment around you? Nobody needs the Grinch for a co-worker or a subordinate. Can you relate to people and create a little sunshine? I don't mean you to be a flippant joker. Not at all. Just someone who is professional and cheerful.
5. Influencer: This is the person who is persuasive and a networker. The person who knows people and what makes them tick and is not afraid to ask a favor and do one in return. He/she breaks organizational silos and reaches out to the people across the value chain. This person is an invaluable resource to get things done. A manager would kill to have one on the team.

So how many of these do you have?

Where have I been?

In case you have been wondering whether this blog has been kept in cold storage, don't worry. Am around and very much kickin' it. Only this time, it's offline.
Am currently in the beautiful city of Pune in western India, delivering two back to back workshops for a client. One of the workshops was for veteran managers on Influencing and Networking Skills.
Today and tomorrow I am delivering a program for their management trainees on making the transition to a full time management role and facilitating understanding that the choice in their hands to make a vibrant and positive workplace.

Here are some interesting blogs I came across recently. HRM Today is a community blog authored by some of my fave bloggers. ResumeGrabber is a company I tweeted about sometime back, and now they have started blogging too. On a related note CodeMunch claims it's a social resume builder application. Cool. Note to self: Must check it out to see what that means.
The Human Capital Institute is starting blogs related to talent acquisition, leadership, the talent economy, talent development and strategy. Only the talent economy blogs seems to have any worthwhile content on it, so far.

Blogging for Consultants

Looks like there is some sort of Consulting and Blogging meme going around. Guerilla Consultant has a well thought out argument what kind of consultant should be looking at blogging:

Blogging is the perfect Guerrilla Marketing tactic. You can reach a large audience quickly, and repeatedly. The cost of blogging is low, and the technology is simple to use. It's an excellent way to stay in touch with your existing clients and help prospective clients get to know you. 

With all that going for it as a marketing tool, shouldn't every consultant be blogging?

The marketing tools that work best are those that you can execute most effectively. If you get tongue-tied in front of an audience, it doesn't make sense for public speaking to be the centerpiece of your marketing program. That just leads to foot dragging, and the results aren't likely to be stellar either. 

The same point applies to blogs. Do you like to write--a lot? If you don't enjoy writing regularly, or you aren't very good at it, you may want to hold off on that blog. 

The technical aspects of blogging may be a no-brainer, but content drives the success of a blog. Can you feed your blog with content that your clients really want to read? Finding relevant content takes time. Even if you have plenty to say, you still have to draft, edit, and publish, all of which are time-consuming. 

You often hear bloggers say that blogs invite informal writing, and that typos and grammatical errors just come with the territory. Maybe that's okay for Max the Golden Retriever, but it's the kiss of death if you are marketing a high-end professional services business. Be sure you have the skills, time, and patience to write valuable stuff on a regular basis.

That's right folks. If the buyer of your services is out there searching on the internet (and who's not?) having a blog, specially if you like writing is great. But GC didn't get it fully right. For consultants who look great on camera, and those who can speak well have options too. Embedding videos and podcasting.

Blogs are just a tool. Embrace the tool to suit your strength. Build links with other consultants and pagerank will follow. Once PageRank comes, authority follows. 

However if you think your clients don't search for services that you offer on the internet you can possibly hold of from blogging.

Can you be sure that your client's junior who has been asked to compile a list of potential consultants does not, however?

India Business Feed network on Feedburner

Hey, I've joined this cool experiment that Palin started called the India Business Feed.

The objective is to a) provide the readers the best of business bloggers in India in one master feed, and b) help encourage and support business blogging in India. Readers can subscribe to the feed or subscribe to the latest updates on email (check the Daily Network Digest on sidebar of the Network page). On this note, we would appreciate if the member bloggers can use the network badge or BuzzBoost to help highlight posts of fellow bloggers on their blogs.

Membership is through invitation only, though you can email editor@indiaprblog.com with your blog details for consideration.

If you are someone looking at advertising across the Indian Business Blogger network here is where you should sign up:

HR's relevance to the business

Rohit has an interesting idea:

While sales are accountable for top line, finance is accountable for funds flow and capital management, they need to take charge of a P&L or Balance Sheet linked item. The item that they could logically look at picking in my view is ‘Employee Productivity’: Revenue Per Employee and Cost Per Employee. If they could go to boards with performance plans having target numbers on the above 2 items, whatever they would do in order to achieve that will start having completely different dimensions, both for them and for the CEO.

You would then start looking at Performance Management Systems from the point of increasing productivity and not just ‘high performance environment’, you start looking at compensation decisions in light of controlling cost per employee and not just ‘benchmarking at certain percentile’, you start looking at hiring from efficiency of manpower numbers and talent model at various levels and not just ‘meeting business requirements. So on and so forth we could see the beginning of a change….beginning of HR creating some value for the business and for itself.

Interesting but as I commented, who would take the call on final people decisions? if HR feels that a person should be fired because they can hire a person who can ensure higher return on employee cost (ROEC) and the reporting manager is not in agreement, then what happens?

So let's take an assumption that managers give off the irritating 'people management' decisions to HR. What then? What about initiatives like succession planning and talent development.

Would HR then say "Oops we are spending too much on training, increasing our Employee Costs. Let's scrap all this"

What do you say?

Alan Weiss on Consulting and Social Media

Dr. Alan Weiss is of the opinion that blogs are of not much use if you are trying to leverage them to build a consulting brand.

Here are some of the interesting observations:

1. Blogs are only effective if you already have a brand. People come here, or go read Seth Godin, or Marshall Goldsmith, or Jeffrey Gitomer, or David Meister, because we’re all well known in our areas of expertise. That is, a blog follows a brand, not the other way around. You can’t create a brand just with a blog, unless you’re ridiculously lucky, and business can’t be based on luck.
3. You can use up all your time following blogs. Buyers of consulting services don’t visit blogs as a rule, and certainly not to make buying decisions. They may visit a blog AFTER they have a relationship with the consultant, which just proves my point.
4. Twitter is pretty nonsensical. Watching someone wash their hair or walk to their car is irrelevant to marketing consulting services. It is idiosyncratic. I think it’s fine if people want to do this as a hobby, but for solo practitioners and entrepreneurs, it can drain your life away. It is to marketing what text messaging is to writing a novel.
5. YouTube I find useful in that you can access some outstanding resources there, such as the lectures given at TED. But you also find all the schlock in the universe, and there must be a law that, to post comments, you have to have flunked both basic English and civility in primary school, because the proportion of dolts and louts who post things is frightening. It’s like being at a hockey game, but you can’t get a hot dog.
6. Facebook, linked-in, and all the rest of the social crawl space is fine for trying to get a full time job, or finding out who’s divorced, or sharing your latest hairstyle, or flirting. I abhor the linked-in automated messages about “good friends” who have asked me to join their network whom I can’t even recall, and I find it reprehensible to dump your entire contact list into this morass and annoy everyone who’s ever written you an email or sent you an overdue notice. I find linked-in to be the worst kind of spam.

Provocative? Maybe.

Dr Weiss does make some points. Don't make blogs/social media the "only" source for building your consulting brand. Speak at seminars. Network at industry events. Write for journals. Maybe, even publish a book.

Unless you wish you consult only about social media.

I'm kind of ambivalent about his observation that business can't be based on luck. Innovative business, alas is about a lot of luck. How do you ensure that you beat the chance factor. You increase your variety and spread. That's one of the rules of 11 1/2 weird rules of Innovation according to Dr. Bob Sutton. And sometimes you count on luck, to explore:

When you know that you need to head in a new direction, but you don't know which road to take, sometimes the best thing is to do whatever is most ridiculous or random. Thinking up the dumbest and most impractical things that you can do is a powerful way to explore your assumptions about the world. When you get people talking about products, services, and business practices that they believe are misguided, dumb, or even destructive, it can help bring the beliefs of the group into broad relief and crystallize what the company should be doing.

So if Alan does not believe that blogging can help in bringing in consulting business, why the blog after all? The About page does not give any reasons why.

Maybe he just doesn't want to be left behind by other consultants who are blogging. Like, Tom Peters.

Bringing sexy to HR

Jon hosts the HR Carnival and sexes it up! Go ahead, check out the UK stop of the carnival. There's even one linked to cricket!

Some great and sexy posts on HR there.

What? You don't find HR sexy enough?

You're kidding!

Where else can you - -- uh oh, that'll be the topic of many other blog posts ;-)

Your chance to win a 16G IPod touch

I was contacted by Crimcheck.com, a background check and employment screening company, and they told me about a contest to win a brand new 16G IPod Touch and Accessory kit.

Crimcheck.com is a company based out of Cleveland, Ohio that does background checks and pre-employment screening.

This awesome contest gives someone the opportunity to win a pretty amazing prize, a brand new 16 G IPod Touch and accessory kit, totally worth about $449.

You get to play investigator and guess which criminal is featured in the mug shot. If you guess correctly you are entered to win the IPod Touch package. To play for free visit http://www.crimcheck.com/contest/. Good Luck!

And yes, the contest is open to anyone, from any country. They have indicated that would be happy to ship the Ipod (should you win) to non-US countries too.

The Elevator Speech

I like what Ford Harding calls the Stern Elevator Speech - before you get scared, it's not stern (being named after someone called Stern) and it's not a speech. In fact, it's less than the 140 character Twitter speech :-)

I use variations of similar introductions, without necessary getting into a spiel about what I do. It's great to get business development opportunities from social occasions.

Some weeks ago I took my kids to one of their friend's birthday party. Got talking to one of kid's father.

Turned out that he was a promoter of a niche manufacturing firm. Then he asked me "So what do you do?"

Me: "Oh, I help organizations set up HR systems and process." (I say that because saying "I'm a HR Consultant" makes them think I am a headhunter, and the conversation goes into a different direction and too much effort goes into making them come around to what I want them to remember. Saying "Am a strategic HR and OD consultant" would ensure another round of clarifications)

When you are trying to build a business relationship, choose to let the person do most of the talking.

"Really?" he said "What kind systems and processes?"

Me: "We work a lot with small and medium enterprises, and because they can't usually afford to set up large HR departments, we develop their recruitment, compensation & benefits system, Performance managment systems so that they can get the most suited talent to come and work for them"

"Hmm"

After a couple of minutes he said "I heard what you said. We are also facing a lot of talent challenges in our business. Competition has gone up, and we are losing people to them. Do you have a card on you so that I can call you later?"

"Sure"

It was a social occasion. I did not want to be the one making the 'sales approach' and seem pushy. It was the elevator speech that made he CEO ask for my card.

He called me back, too. Last week.

We had our first meeting today.

Update: And if you think you in HR, Finance and IT don't need to know all this stuff. Here's some advice. Tom Peters thinks if you want to get anything done [and implementaion is paramount to Tom], then you are in sales.

Another interesting article by David Perry and Kevin Donline on How to make your Job Outsource Proof. First thing to do:

Whether or not it's in your job description, finding new business is everyone's responsibility. Cash Flow is the lifeblood of every business looking to grow, prosper and create a stable environment for its employees. So, even if you're in accounting or information technology, what one thing could you do to bring in more revenue? If you're not sure, buy your company's top sales superstar a cup of coffee and ask. Then take action to help bring in more money--and make sure your boss knows about the time you've put in.

Here a Ning, There a Ning

More and more Ning networks are sprouting up! After the Linking Power Forum, RecruitingBlogs and HR Professionals networks, here's a new one - for HR Bloggers.

You might have heard of Forrester's report on Social Technographics, where in an online community 13% are creators, 19% are critics etc. More here. So what would happen if all creators and critics form a community?

HR Bloggers might be an interesting experiment to see if over communicators like bloggers also fall back into the same ratios and some take the lead and others are content to be joiners and spectators and inactives. I think we will. Let's see how it pans out.

On other news, since I complete six years of blogging tomorrow, here are some interesting reponses I got from my Twitter friends. Shel Israel (who literally wrote the book on Business Blogging) sent me this message:
The other message was by a person who works in a pay-for-performance digital advertising firm, who let me know this:


Heh. I never thought that I would become a pin-up boy for social media :D

On my other blog you would find my book reviews of Yogesh Chabria's book "Invest the Happionaire Way" as well as JAM's Rashmi Bansal's edited book "Engineering Admissions" (I consider it India's first social media created book ;-)

By the way, have you checked out the blogs I follow? They have some great content all the time !

Business Blogs
HR Blogs
Recruiting related Blogs

Flattery will get you anywhere

Ooh ! This mail makes me feel so wanted

What's the bet that I am just one of many thousands who is getting this mail.

Still, I love the ego-massaging aspect! It's a mass mail and yet you feel "Wow! The president of BusinessWeek thinks I am somebody!"

Shows you how a little flattery will ensure people to do most things!

Do you use flattery? Does it work?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Keith Fox, President, BusinessWeek
Date: Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 11:19 PM
Subject: An invitation to join the BusinessWeek Market Advisory Board
To: Gautam Ghosh

Dear Gautam, As a valuable member of the BusinessWeek community, your input matters. That's why I'm pleased to extend this invitation to you to join our exclusive research panel, the BusinessWeek Market Advisory Board. We seek the voices of opinion leaders, like you, to shed light on critical business issues. When you join, you'll become part of a select group that weighs in on various topics through periodic online surveys. Your unique perspective will help us better understand how current trends are driving change in today's business environment. It only takes a few minutes to join, and membership offers benefits such as access to exclusive research papers, newsletters, and sweepstakes opportunities. Please click here to sign up. Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing your thoughts as a member of the BusinessWeek Market Advisory Board. Sincerely, Keith Fox President BusinessWeek

From software to management

A career question from a reader:

I have 6 + years of experience in .net technology and i am kinda getting bored of looking at requirements to designing them to coding and releasing.
i had a opportunity in dealing with solving people problems and i loved the job,
but felt its not safe as there is no technology involved in it.
am in the right job? question bugged me and i straight came back to technology again, though solving people problem gives me the outmost satisfaction, but the though that, am i going ahead in my professional carrier holds me back to join the HR stream line.

now that i have made up my mind to pursue MBA in distance learning (i know it may not add up, but i want to cash on the time saved in going to colleges to persue my other interests) will MBA in HR the in thing to do for the, people problem solving bug in me?
the following are the question that are arising in my head.
1) should i do MBA in distance learning
2) Or PMP certifications
3) Is it too early to do MBA at 6 yrs of experience in technology (i am still senior software engineer)
4) I like doing analysis from different view points, comparing data, understanding the emotional aspects of humans at work.The six sigma kind of attitude, what would suit me?
5) ICFAI or Symbosis?
6) Can i do research being in HR about human behaviour at work?

in case you get time, request you to please respond as this confused soul might get nirvana through your comments.
hope to hear from you.

My reply:

You need to first understand what your main interest is and where you would like your career to be headed.

If technology gives you a high then you can choose two paths:

1. Project Management – This is where the PMP certification would be useful in looking at non-technology things like risk management, resource management to manage large and complex projects.
2. You can specialise with a particular technology and become a subject matter expert in it. This has a certain amount of risk associated with it as the demand for a particular technology can rise and fall depending on external factors. And you’d have to spend on certifications for it.

Doing an MBA would expand your options. With 6 years of experience you are not ‘early’ to do it at all. Doing a full time MBA would be the most useful as it would assist you in the placement process. Between Symbiosis and ICFAI I would opt for Symbiosis for a full time MBA as placements are better and being in Pune it’s closer to the business hub of India, Mumbai.

Exposure to technology would help you to look at a lot of different disciplines and industries. Batchmates of mine who were software engineers before doing an MBA in HR are doing diverse things now. One is an Engagement Manager with a Marketing Analytics firm and one is Heading HR for an FMCG firm for south Asia. One actually became a HRIS consultant with an Indian IT firm and has moved to generic HR consulting with an MNC technology firm. So there are a lot of options.

Am not sure what you mean by ‘research about human behaviour at work’. Research would ideally be a part of an educational course like PhD. For that you first need to do a post-graduation degree/diploma.

No Shows for Interviews

As part of the HR services we deliver for a client, we also recruit people (note: we are not headhunters, but rather act as internal HR depts of organizations)

One of the things I have noticed recently is that when one of my consultants is trying to set up interviews with the hiring manager, if 10 people say they are interested in an opening, finally only 2 turn up for the interview, and the rest have to be followed up individually, and are usually not responsive to emails or phone calls.

Let me assure you these are not highly in demand talent like software developers that we are chasing, but plain graduates in the sales function.

So I am left asking myself: "Self, why don't people turn up for interviews when they confirm first? Or at least call up and inform that they thought about it and are no longer interested"

When you don't turn up for an interview what you are essentially saying is "I am not professional and I don't care if you know it."

Why do that?

Best of luck to Michael Specht

Michael Specht was one of the earliest Aussie HR technology bloggers that I connected with through the HR/recruiting blogosphere.

Though Michael's day job was HRIS related he was really thinking about employee engagement and related HR issues. A real example for being a domain consultant!

This week was a significant time for Michael. He is no longer employed, and has started out with setting up his own company.

Here's wishing him the best in getting enterprise 2.0 to be a reality within organizations.

Go, Michael !

Change is the past

Steve Roesler asks that question:

Perhaps what has happened is that the word "Change" has become institutionalized. It's been associated with hype, programs, and unsupported initiatives. We're numb to the word.

Yet, my everyday professional practice shows that we're all involved in looking for ways to improve something. And that means making changes.

I'm not ready to let go of the idea yet.

I agree with Steve in personally thinking that the "change" moniker was a all encompassing one. Change for what? What's the objective, what's the purpose?

Unless those are clear and the steps are clear, change for change's sake will be difficult to achieve.

Why would an organization want to change?

Well so that it can improve things from the way they are. Presumably.

Who made the things the way they are?

Unfortunately, usually some of the folks who are clamoring for change.

Now you know why people don't really trust the "change" word. It conveys that people are insincere and lack integrity when they ask for it. So now, it has the trappings of a 'buzzword'. Not trusted.

HR people mess the employment brand

Let me confess, I get a lot of calls for HR consulting roles, from some of the biggest firms in the business. Usually I say a "no" to them. That's because these HR Consultants have messed up their own employment brand in my eyes.

Yeah, dear readers, employment branding is too important a think to be left to HR professionals (or consultants!). Even the HR Wench discovers this now:

I see a lot of articles, blog posts and comments from non-HR job seekers out there that complain about never hearing back from recruiters and hiring managers. Even those that are flown across the country for interviews, put up in hotels and given gift baskets (for crap's sake!) are sometimes left hanging with no offer and no "thanks but no thanks" communication.

Well guess what? It happens when HR recruiters and hiring managers are hiring HR pros too.

The good news about this is, the HR job seeker knows right away that they would not have wanted to work at the communication-challenged company anyways. I mean, if they can't even send a 3 sentence decline letter or email after an interview what else is going on there? Then again, the HR job seeker may lament, "See? This is why they need ME - to improve their employment brand!"

So if you are a HR professional, what are you doing to rescue your employment brand?

I complete Six years of blogging

The coming weekend will mark six years of blogging about HR and related issues.

Phew! It's been a long time. I've grown and learnt a lot. About people. About organizations. About relationships and networking. About social media. I hope my posts over this time have developed along with me.

I hope it's been as much fun for you to read my posts as it has been for me to authoring it.

2,101 posts and lots of comments. I hope they have add value to you and try to answer what you look for. Thanks for continuing to mail your views and questions. I might not be in a position to reply to each one of you or feature your questions on the blog, but I will surely try. And I want you to know that I read every word, and am thankful that you take your time out to mail me.

It's the attention and relationship economy. By giving me your attention you are acknowledging me and we have some kind of relationship going.

You can find me at various places on the internet, as given below. This blog feels most like home, however.

Gautam's Net| Gautam on Googlepages| Twitter| FriendFeed| Facebook| Orkut| Google Sites| My First webpage ever| Linkedin| The Other Blog| Flickr

Improving Team Performance

A good friend of mine Gurprriet Siingh got interviewed by NDTV's program One Life to Love and this is his video where he talks about Organizational Culture:

Career question: 20 years experience

A reader sent me this email:

i am doing distance mba from [institute] .i am B.Tech(Civil) from NIT Calicut and have 20yrs experience in construction engineering.atpresent i am working as GM(Projects) in a leading construction company.my task is to administor all the works and get them, executed.which specialisation should i take HR or Operations or something else....

awaiting reply...

My reply to him was:

I do not think that an MBA by distance education will add much value to your career goals. Your focus should be to extract maximum learnings from it and therefore if you are aiming for a leadership position you should focus on learning about the 'life-blood' of the business, Finance or the way to get more money into the system i.e. marketing and sales.

Hope that helps.

Indian salaries set to rise again

From Business Standard. Of course, the increase would fluctuate between organizations and industries.

Talent crunch and rapid growth in many sectors has ensured that private sector employees in India have received or can look forward to an average salary increase of 15 per cent this year. The double digit hike has come despite the slowdown and turmoil in financial markets. The increment is roughly the same as the last year but not significant in real terms because of the inflation rate, which is ruling at 8 per cent. Still, India is far ahead of other markets, for instance the average hike was 5.5 per cent in the US and 8 per cent in China. While companies are growing at a fast pace, there is not enough talent in the market to fill the demand.

Thus, companies are resorting to significant pay hikes to retain people. According to executive search firm EMA Partners International, average increases will be 7 to15 per cent while top performers will still get 25 to 30 per cent. HR firm Hewitt Associates estimates average salaries in India rose 15.2 across sectors for 2008-09. Unlike in developed countries, where the increases are linked to inflation, in India salary increases are generally driven by the demand-supply scenario.

If you are an employer/HR manager do you agree with these projections?

How about if you are employees? How much hike have you got? How much are you expecting?