Hiring for Indian E-commerce : often hit by an iceberg

Hiring and Firing @ Indian E-Commerce

Indian e-commerce has boomed in last three years. The growth story of the e-commerce companies have been largely a fairy tale. However, behind the glamor, lies some horror stories which are often pushed under the carpet. Yet, these stories often find their way out- thanks to active media and social media. And one big story every company try to hide is their lay-offs.

Hiring for young e-commerce company is a task much more than it meets the eye. Often, it is mistaken as a job of quick ramp up of numbers and getting the resource in but it leads to bigger problem later on. We have seen lot of examples in last half a decade where the individual companies, who have hired the cream of the talent from premier schools and otherwise, had to ‘right size’ their organization as per business growth, forecast and cost optimization measures- often given a name of strategic initiative. The reasons for this accelerated hiring and firing can be many. I am just trying to highlight a few as per my understanding

Reason 1: Not knowing what they want

The young start-ups are largely started by young people who have enthusiasm and vision but somewhere lack experience. Hence, sometimes they do not know what kind of person will suit them best. They often land up a specialist as they see the person bringing in a deeper knowledge even at a place where they need a generalist. Hence, either one more position needs to be created or the right person needs to replace the old one.  Lack of quality interviewers also contribute to the problem.

Reason 2: Five blind men and elephant

Some profiles are much talked about in an e-commerce parlance. Online-marketing, visualizer, content writer and product management are just name a few. However, if you ask 3-4 people to define their understanding of product management or online marketing, the answers may be very different. Each company views these profiles from their perspective. A person in online marketing of travel portal has different mindset compared to online marketing person working in a premium jewellery segment.

Reason 3: Metamorphosis of environment/organization

Some organizations could not grow as per their anticipation as their funding dried up, their penetration into new market or geography did not yield expected results or some other aggressive player has dented their market share. Some organizations have gone through complete re-vamping of their business model. In such situations, the hiring of past must be undone to cut the flab, excess cost and to get new thought process as per the changed requirements.

Reason 4: Lack of vision

Sometimes hiring is done only to create a big bang on some premier school campuses or to hit the headline- trying to show off their muscles (funding). This kind of hiring often misfire as then the utilization or output is not upto the cost involved which leads to rethinking of decision.

Reason 5: Lack of HR involvement in the beginning.

Sometimes lot of duplicating of profile happens in the organization as different business units hire of similar profiles. In absence of central HR function which talks about internal availability of talent, the duplication of profiles happen. Later, such profiles often form a central team shared across divisions and hence some resources are asked to leave. Training, analytics and marketing are typical examples of such functions.

References

http://profit.ndtv.com/news/careers/article-speed-hiring-catches-fancy-12-minutes-and-hired-or-fired-1207796?pfrom=home-business

http://www.nextbigwhat.com/fabfurnish-layoffs-and-restructuring-297/

http://www.firstpost.com/business/tightening-cash-burn-housing-com-sack-600-staff-just-three-months-2385420.html

http://www.crazyengineers.com/threads/flipkart-layoffs-250-employees-are-out.67984/

Following my HR Dharma

Following my HR Dharma

As HR person, I have always found myself in either of the two most confusing, emotionally taxing and intellectually challenging situations, which has often provoked me to reach out for thoughts and newer solutions but sometimes lot of turmoil. The acceptable unethical and guilt of doing right has always haunted me. I have been hated and not loved by many for doing the right or accepting the wrong- but I have managed to live with it.

One of the situation is accepting the unethical behaviour. In today’s world, where recruitment is competitive, business is aggressive and environment is dynamic, we all get into and accept some unethical practices, sometimes unknowingly but mostly, in our full senses and consciousness. Examples are numerous. Which recruiter has not seen a candidate not turning up on the day of joining or coming back after ten days from receiving the offer, bargaining for a new salary as he/she has a parallel offer now? As HR, we all know that it is unethical. The candidate may bargain again with us or someone else, yet most of the time we budge. Accepting the unwanted. If we do not accept the arm twisting and try to show that we have come out strong and victorious, we are fooling ourselves. Few months down the line if we cross paths with same candidate, we will still try our best to hire him and will not reject him based on his ethics, as demonstrated in the past.

E-commerce is a new world to Indian business environment and almost an alien word to our legal system which refused to go through metamorphosis from acts of 1950s and 60s, thus challenging Mr. Darwin. Hence, every company in this newly evolved space, follow some legal guidelines as per their understanding and often as per their convenience as the lazy legal system fails to combat the exploitation of the system. However, these companies have given new experience to consumers, values to shareholders and fat package to employees, thus increasing the overall social strata. Hence we agree to moulding of legal system as per our need and also include labour inspectors and similar people as our accomplice. And the best is, we have an alibi- “this is what we have understood as per below clause as this is the job we are in to”.

The second extreme is guilt of doing the right. Lot of times we hear, “HR has not given me good hike or promotion”, “HR has been downsizing like crazy”, “HR threw me out one fine day” and many more sweet allegations.

Yes, we do all. But do we do it willingly? Do we enjoy it? I am quite tempted to quote Shylock (Merchant of Venice) here,

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?”

We also do not like to fire an individual or group. We also understand that they do have financial commitments and responsibilities to carry. However, when weighed against the greater good of the organization- either in terms of saving the expense or by disassociating from an employee who has done unethical acts or can be a potential threat to information and security, we are left with no choice. We manage the cost for overall organization, trying to be as fair as possible, treating everyone with same respect as per their output to the organization, only to hear the unpleasant. We execute the unwanted amputation with a fine precision as a surgeon, disconnecting one major nerve of the organization with minimal possible pain, yet we are HR- Hardly Recognized.

Sometimes, we even know who is right between two disputed parties. But like our judiciary, we also need to keep our friendship, judgement and knowing of truth aside, rely only on proofs and take decision which sometimes is fair and sometimes is anything but fair- and we know that.

HR needs to deal with lot of conflicting emotions in their daily work profile. They need to balance their head, keep it levelled.  The conflicts will always be there, but what makes one successful is one’s ability to detach from all feelings and just act. Something similar to what Arjun did at Mahabharata, pegged down Bhishma in not so ethical way and had to and killed his own family members for greater good of society and dharma.

As HR, let us remember our karma (KRA), work for greater good of society (organization), be emotionless to our family members (colleagues and employees) as they are here to come and go, be a medium for change like Arjun was and just follow our HR dharma.

Use of psychometric in Young Organizations

Use of psychometric in Young Organizations

If I look back today, last one decade has taught us a lot of new things- and perhaps one of the big things we have learnt, is how to shop online without ‘touch and feel’. Surely, the last ten years has been an era of start-ups and e-commerce.  An e-commerce organization is a nothing but a new way of doing the old business and the comfort and convenience of the consumer is kept at prime. In such new organizations, most of the times, a young team often comes together and create something dynamic- targeting the old problem but with a brand new approach.  When the initial core team is getting formed, obviously some experience is blended with the exuberance to ensure a smooth sailing. However, not every-one is a tailored fit for a start-up, including the founders. Some can be molded, some cannot. How to get the best fit as well as areas of improvements for people in a start-up, psychometric analysis can be a good tool. Before we get to probable usage of psychometric, let us look at some of the cases. I am sure, we all would have met someone similar people in our professional stint. It is only to highlight that how young organization have different initial members who with the growth of the organization need to develop certain complimenting skills in their team.

Case 1

 Sarvendu was one of the young entrepreneur CEOs.  He has thought of offering buying options online to Indian public which was confined to highly unorganized sector. Sarvendu was surely one of the best brains as far as business acumen and business plans were concerned. He was a friendly CEO and always wanted his employees to have fun at work yet he was a man of few words- very few words. With his online venture in it’s fourth year of existence, his company was almost 350 employees strong. It was also important for him to address media and employees on periodic basis. Addressing media or investors was still easier task for him. Meeting employees in public forum where 400 pairs of eyes are gazing at him and he is fielding their questions or speaking to them was tough part for him. Not that he was afraid of questions but not in the public under hundreds of stare. A pure introvert that ways. However, with people he had a rapport, he used to interact during and outside office as well but they were very few in numbers.

Case 2

Narayan was pretty elder compared to most at a senior level position in a four year old e-commerce company, almost by a decade in terms of experience or may be even more. He was a conventional old world finance person. A CA by profession, he had a background of 18 years in a two big manufacturing set ups before coming in to his current stint. He was not as popular in his direct team and otherwise as other leaders. He was more perceived as threat or autocratic boss among his team members. Others also tried to avoid him and kept the interaction with him to the minimal. He had constant tussle with couple of his young team members. They were young and wanted a young culture in this young organization. However, he was a follower of ten hours in office with half an hour lunch break.   Not too much into employee engagement and fun activities, some of his team members were finding it tough to adapt to his style of working especially when other teams are enjoying a free work environment within the company. He preferred hiring people who could align to his thought process without much of confrontation on any topic. His management style was surely of yesteryears but his finance knowledge was phenomenal.  He knew all the parameters very well where investors could ask questions and he used to ensure full compliance to all basic requirements.

Case 3

Hema was a dynamic lady and was heading the training and development. She was extremely driven by targets and deliverables and was perhaps the best person to get the output. Training is often neglected in most of the organizations but not where she had been in control.   Her planning and execution was near perfect and she has managed praises for implementation of program from all her superiors all through her career. She believed in connecting with people and hence lot of her work used to get done due to personal influence. She actually used to get deeply and emotionally involved with her work, team members and stake holders. However, in order to meet the deadline, she used to push herself, her team members and stakeholders all too hard, more often infringing into the areas she should not. Her passion for work was way too high and she expected even her stakeholders and team to put her job on priority- if not professionally then at least owing to the personal rapport they have, they should. Hence, quite often she used to feel being betrayed or being let down if her task is not valued with the same priority by others. It used to be a personal let down for her with the feeling that she is not getting the due importance by people.  

Case 3

Anurag was a young HR leader. He had an interesting career run. He looked like a safe risk-averse player but he always moved to a younger and naïve organization compared to his previous one. He looked for bigger responsibilities to drive things in organizations where things are not yet set. He looked for places where things are hazy and directionless. He was a policy maker and follower, driven by data, slightly reserved, was approachable but not proactive speaker. His team used to love him as he always focused on their development and cracked jokes with them. He was like a protective bubble for his team members. On the other hand, he was one of the most feared man on the floor. A hard task master and a perfectionist- bordering on being finicky. A dormant volcano who used to be quite dormant till he is pushed to explode and post that, it used to be fire and fury. If a deadline is missed or job not done despite his follow ups, the dormant volcano used to get active.

Case 4

Juhi was a good trainer of behavior and leadership skills. She knew how to drive other vendors when required. Developing the training process, thinking of content and making a flow was like a cake walk for her. She was a risk taker and used to accept open challenges without thinking too much. This attitude sometimes used to land her in troubled waters too. She used to meet her real waterloo when the documentation, process and protocols were to be done. With finance and other teams, obviously she had to ensure all documents reach in a particular format and basic process is followed. This was not something which used to come naturally to her and often were procrastinated till being inevitable.

Case 5

Nigam, was a senior person and a well-known name in field of marketing. He had lot of creative ideas, often tried and tested and if not tested, still a safe bet to give a decent result if not radical. He was friendly when approached. He was quite respected at the young organization he was working for. He brought in a rich fifteen years of experience with some of the most renowned and old business houses. However, due to his age, team was slight reluctant to approach him if the doubt is not very big. He has given decent results to the organization so far. However, with few competitors coming up in last one year or so, he was facing the heat from the management to do something radical to improve the presence among young people. Overall, he was respected as a nice uncle to look up to but not someone who can bring dynamic changes.

Now we have seen few personalities. Some of the traits we witnessed are shy, aggressive and emotional, passive aggressive, aggressive but unorganized, rigid to a change, and risk averse.  Are they all fit for a young organization? Do they all bring in certain proposition to the table for organizations? Do they have big skill gaps as senior professionals that need plugging in? We can have lot of open questions and some of those can be answered through psychometric.

Psychometric may not always be an evaluation method during the hiring. It also need not give a verdict in binary whether someone is fit for the given job or not. However, it shall be a tool for one’s development especially in young organizations. Two common mistakes we may do while making psychometric evaluation for younger organizations are

·         Creative doesn’t mean only artists: We take the mentioned quality for a particular personality type on its face value. For instance, INTP, ESTP or ISTP are creative people. However, we often confuse creative people with professions like writer, musician, painter or someone similar. However, creative people need not be only artists. They can be inventors or for that matter any professional who brings in fresh perspective and out of box solutions to their existing work areas. An HR person can be creative in terms of people practices he brings in or a software developer can be equally creative in terms of what he creates

·         We shall not stereotype a personality type and people: Most of the recommended professions through psychometric evaluations were on the basis of established organizations. For instance, a person with ESTJ profile as per MBTI profiling, is said to be a good CEO as he/ she possesses good supervisory skills. However, not that every ESTJ becomes a CEO or vice-versa. In-fact, most of the modern CEOs are of creative personality type since they have created an out of box solution for long standing problems.

In young organizations, a CEO might not always be an ESTJ or with a high D-I as per DISC profiling. The person may be a more creative person who would have thought of an innovative solution to an existing problem. He is bringing in a passion and innovation. Hence he started something so creative and innovative and had he been just a good supervisor, he would not have created something new.

The psychometric can give feedback on skill-set/competencies of a good leader who needs to manage people and processes simultaneously. Similarly, an individual who is low on ’Compliance’ as per DISC, needs to have someone who can complement him/ her on process adherence. Each individual discussed here, brings in certain characteristic and competencies if they all have to start an organization together. They all had their respective shortfalls. Psychometric tools only help us in understanding that there are certain areas to be plugged in and identification of development areas. Like Sarvendu needed to work on his communication or must have someone close who communicates on his behalf. Juhi, must have a team member to put all documents together and Narayan needed a direct reporting person who can bridge the gap between his old world sincerity and new age work culture.  In short, a strong gut shall be backed by data, an introversion shall be complimented by extroversion, an intuition shall be complemented by sensing and low on compliance shall be accordingly complimented.

Early on in the evolution of an organization, one finds employees with a certain leaning- non-compliant or non-follower looking for innovative breakthroughs. Once the organization stabilizes, it needs people who can steady the ship and navigate through the stormy seas. Then competencies such as compliance, adherence and process orientation need to blend in then for sustenance and continued growth of the organization and psychometrics helps in getting the right fit but only when the ship has gained certain momentum.

 

Neither a Casanova, nor a virgin !

‘Neither a Casanova nor a virgin’, sounds interesting as well as nebulous too. The phrase depicts an uncertainty or indecision or to put it in direct and simple terms, a state of confusion. On a closer look, the caption shows too contrasting characters a person can be in state of i.e. two extremities a pendulum can reach.

Think of a pendulum, still at its position. It won’t move at its own till it gets a push in either of the direction. So is a common. Very much stable in day to day routine life, he is quite reluctant to changes till he gets a push, which may or may not be favorable. Even if has the willingness to change, a cloud of uncertainty, indecision and confusion is there enveloping his thought process. His first step towards any situations is under compulsion. The compulsion can be a strong motivating incentive which is too lucrative to reject or an extreme crisis where he has no other option than to change his guard and in absence of any of these, he often settles down for the vanilla; mediocrity !!

This explanation can not be generalized to all but definitely to the majority who incidentally are called mediocre or middle class people in common parlance. These people are marked by their characteristic of leaving a lot to the fate. But who fall under this typical class?? The persons, who fulfill any of the following criteria, are part of the segment I am talking about.

1. The person is having mediocre academic records.
2. The person is ‘Jack of all trades but master of none’, apart from academics.
3. The person is bourgeoisie.

These criteria are very important to understand as they will be referred time to time again. Ideally the most suitable example for such kind of person would be the one who satisfies the entire three criterions. He is the person who has to face the most ‘adversities’ in his life. He has brains, but not enough. He has resources but partially inadequate and is talented but not attention grabbing. So whenever the person asses himself, he finds himself better than most of the persons around but still he is no where near the top, be it any field. The glory eludes him, may be by a whisker but there is the slip between cup and the lip. The person here is compelled to lead a life of late 20^th century despite being well into the new millennium. His limited resources force him to have a limited exposure, outlook and use of modern technology and in turn a limited mindset. He arrives at all the milestones in life but may be a fraction later than he could.

At this juncture, two questions provoke my mediocre brain. First, how such unfavorable grounds for a person is created and secondly, are the people of the class we are talking about are the unsuccessful in life? To answer the questions, we can take the person fulfilling all the three situations. The possibility of having combination of any two ‘qualities’  is also there but for our simplicity, we’ll take persons who fulfill one of the parameters only and see how complex things can get in life.

Taking the first question, first that how such situation arises? In language of a demagogue politician, the answer would be that the rich people have always capitalized on poor masses’ limitations. The gap has widened through the years and we need to change the social imbalance. In my view I rule out any such phenomenon especially in third world where everyone is to be held responsible for his own condition. The world today is more of a selfish world and if anyone has failed to recognize and exploit the opportunity, no one else can be blamed. I must remind that by saying selfish here, I do not mean unethical. Someone perhaps was frank or may be shameless and knocked on the door of the ‘do not disturb’ opportunity at the right time. He has gained advantage over others sitting and waiting for some kind of miracle to happen before they knock at their door. ‘Nirlajjam sadaa sukhi’ !!

Coming back to the circumference within which a mediocre life is so called compelled to live. There are many reasons creating such restrictions. First is financial background. A not so sound financial background force a person to compromise on education, technology and knowledge despite being aware of the latest developments around. It will be a mistake to adjudge that person as a poor person. In fact the person is having his resources but limited and some major priorities. His limited funds make all his desires take a back seat. He allowing the situation to take over, most of the times helplessly watches what is happening around in the world.

Now let us look at the second question which is still staring us that are mediocre people successful in life? Then let us find out what does the term ‘being successful’ means? If getting bread and butter twice a day and 365 days a year is meant by being successful, then even a menial dog is enjoying success (no offence to pugs!).

It is very difficult to define ‘success’ in clear and concrete terms as it will differ from person to person. I personally feel that despite having our own definition of success, there is one common chord on which we all will have sync. Is the person achieving his set goals and desired social status? Sounds logical to an extent but only when a clause is attached. The set goals must be socially acceptable and higher than the prevailing status of the person. As success is a relative term, until the change is relatively positive, it can not be termed success.

Now when we have defined our way of measuring ‘success’, it is time to get back to the discussion that whether the person meeting all the conditions of a mediocrity is worse off than the person who is meeting only one of such conditions? The following example will clarify our thoughts and will give new insights to our discussion.

There were three friends, let us say Mr. A, Mr. B and Mr. C. Amazingly all of them were mediocre of one kind or the other.  Mr. A was academically barely competent, enough only to avoid any unwanted grades. Mr. B was a jack of all trades while Mr. C had a lower middle class background.

The trio had some amazing qualities to complement. Mr. A, son of a well off businessman, was a good sportsman. Once he managed to clear his school, he joined a training camp and with a personal gymnasium at home, he soon became a national level player. As he had no reasons to worry for his bread, butter and shelter, he devoted his time to his sports. With passage of time he turned professional and earned quite a name for himself. Soon he found few sponsors ready to bestow a fortune on him and he gladly accepted the offer. Now he had more than a name in society.

His friend Mr. B as I said was jack of all trades but a very good student. His academics were simply outstanding and even his fallen grades used to be an ‘A’. Though he didn’t have anything else to boost, his academic records were recognized everywhere. His father, a respectable man in society could afford a part of his education only but with help of scholarships and continuous merit record, he moved ahead and landed up being a scientist. His contributions to field of science were well recognized.

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The third of the three musketeers Mr. C was a good student and a very good painter. He unfortunately didn’t have a decent family financial backup. So once he was through with the school he had a very tough time arranging his funds for higher studies. He then decided to sell of his paintings made during his free times. Though the situation he faced was not as simple as the description, he somehow managed to graduate and get a decent job. His exceptional talent still seconds his financial stature but more importantly he is widely known in the society for organizing regular painting exhibitions and workshops. His journey to success was a rollercoaster ride but eventually he was equally respectable and sound as his other friends.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention, there was another batch mate of them. I forgot to mention his name earlier but considering that even his friends remember him only after a reminder, the intensity of my mistake is somewhat pardonable. The reason why we always forget Mr….. I am sorry I forgot his name… let us say Mr. D is because he was not good at anything we can remember off. However, he was not bad at anything either. In language of our discussion, he was the best mediocre, a mediocre financially, academically and talent wise too if he had any. His father was a local small merchant. Once he had his basic education complete, he didn’t have enough to go for more degrees. With no outstanding qualities to support his candidature, even jobs were not so easy to come by. Hence he had no other option than to assist his father. He expanded his father’s small shop to whatever extent he could with his limited capital. His conditions improved and with little effort and some luck, he was owner of one of the landmark superstore in the vicinity. He was not as widely recognized in the world as his other colleagues were yet he was satisfied and carrying out a decent and contended life- until he went for his batch reunion.

He met all his friends and teachers but was feeling a bit uncomfortable in the meeting. In the party it was decided to award the all round best student of the batch. To everyone’s surprise Mr. D won the award as he had an average record in every field considered for evaluation, be it academics, talent, sports or whatever. His other friends had very good score in one of the sections evaluated but they had their other sections begging for some score.

To this award however, Mr. D didn’t react with a very warm feelings. His reaction had a tone of bitterness which was a mystery for many. Now let us put ourselves in his shoe and think, how we would have reacted in such situation? What we need is a rational approach and not an emotional approach. The idea of giving the example was not to create a sympathetic ground but highlight their inability to achieve and accept greatness. One thing is sure that nobody did anything wrong to Mr. D. neither he met any accidents or natural calamities nor his family lost everything in a shipwreck.  The only thing which happened against him is that he didn’t get any support from anywhere to carry out his further studies or train for sports/ music. Thus my point- even under very neutral circumstances where a person doesn’t face any adversities but doesn’t get any help either, he is not so successful and remains very much close to his steady neutral position. (Remember, the pendulum, steady at its position until pushed.)

The Conclusion:

To conclude, we can say that a person must understand his capabilities, limitations as well as his knack. Accordingly, he must develop and adapt himself. My idea behind this writing was neither to create a sympathy wave nor to criticize but to expose the middle class mentality. But to bring in a feeling where they start celebrating their mediocrity as long as they are happy with it. If we flip the pages of history, we’ll find that out of 100 great men, only five were privileged ones, rest all achieved their greatness by their effort and dedication. The situation what Albert Einstein, Hitler or even our very first president Dr. Rajendra Prasad faced in their early days is worse than what Mr. D had. Yet they created the difference. I am not giving any motivational lecture on how to be successful in life as my motif here was only to highlight the problem which is acceptance of mediocrity as a scar to live with. The solution of the problem is already available in abundance and is given by many greats. Hence I have decided to restrict my job to only problem recognition.

To conclude, I can say that a person is neither a Casanova nor a virgin on his own and I do not consider innocence as virginity. It is the situation and his reaction to the situation which determines what he becomes. Hence, what a mediocre needs to do is to change his mindset and stop blaming the situation anymore. All one needs to do is to provide bricks and mortar to his thoughts and aspirations and pop a champagne for their ever lasting and soul satisfying state of above average mediocrity. It is them who have made the aces look great and being a jack doesn’t always mean that you are a jackass !

I love recruitment: Rejecting CVs is so much fun

Most recruiters these days get a plenty of CVs from their professional ‘çontacts’ and otherwise. Thanks to some boom in social networking space, getting details of a recruitment person is not difficult- first name.last name@company name.com and bingo, you got the correct email id too. Absolutely no rocket science.

I am not sure how many unsolicited CVs a recruitment person gets in a day. Especially if one is into IT service sector or an e-commerce company. And if you and the applicant have a shared contact on any of the social media site, you cannot even call the CV received as an unsolicited one- even though you have not spoken to your contact in years. Just to give an idea, during my tenure in recruitment with an IT service major, we used to get almost 20-30 thousand resumes in a quarter through our career email id and that too when social media was way less active.

We all know that the ratios are pathetic if we take unemployed population to the eligible for hiring population and unemployed population and available openings. Hence as a recruitment person, I looked for all possible reasons to reject- a slightest doubt, any ambiguity, irrelevant or incomplete information and sometimes even presentation of CV. Scientifically proven, an average Human’s attention span is less than 3 minutes. With modern technology like internet and multi-channel dish TVs, the attention span of humans has reduced drastically as people quickly move to another available option if they do not find one channel/ website appealing. Gone are the days of only Doordarshan where people had no choice but to look at that round thing revolving. 

So let me tell you my favorite reasons to reject CVs.

Ah that cut-copy-paste: I have seen many CVs where people have copied project details from a colleague’s CV. Trust me I have even seen people from different backgrounds in terms of caste and state having the date of birth and father’s name same as each other (thanks to Indian caste system, it makes job easier for recruiters by proving this plagiarism). Obviously, none made to the interview round.

During world-war 2, a famous German spy was caught with a fake British passport. The reason was most simple and it was just one minor mistake which the Germans did despite copying it to a near perfection. Germans of that era, used to write the numeric seven as 7 while the Britishers wrote it as 7. In a similar way, lot of people while copying, miss out on matching the font and style of writing. You may notice two paragraphs in different fonts and writing styles. Bang on!! Recruiters have one reason to drop a CV as probability of being fake is high.

CV is not encyclopedia: I wonder sometimes what must have been the thought process of a person with 5-8 years of relevant job experience when he writes that he was the class cricket team captain or an event coordinator of a college festival during his under-grads. Baffles me. Rather beats me! Some also do not shy away from mentioning their graduation projects while they are applying for a mid-management role. In the sea of irrelevant information, the relevant ones get lost. As a professional, I would like to focus on your professional quality for which I am going to hire you and personal qualities which holds relevance for me in terms of organizational and team fitment. Nothing beyond. 

Senior level people also fall into certain common mistakes which they shall avoid. A long encyclopedia CV and lack of clarity on role they have been performing or they want to get into often lead to rejection or holding of CV. Sometimes, their best work just gets lost in a resume of almost 6-8 pages. It is almost like finding a needle in hay-stack

What do you want to do?: I had the unique experience of knowing one gentleman- of course through his CV. I knew him so well that after a point just by seeing the sender’s name, I used to move the mail to the junk folder. The person applied to all possible jobs we used to advertise in newspaper and send application for all of them. Right from Java architect, dot net programmer to program manager, he was everything. This omnipotent man surely caught the attention of all recruiters but for wrong reasons. The CV shall speak in the introductory paragraph, that who you are and where would you like to go. Selective applications will yield more success than carpet bombing.

Hiding information- something fishy:

My award for best academic qualification goes to BE from JNTU. It really helped me a lot in dropping off the CVs. Nothing against any university but during late 2000s, lot of fake colleges mushroomed and used to give fake degrees. Most of them used JNTU’s name which otherwise is a prestigious university in Andhra. Hence to avoid the trap of false information and fake degrees, recruiters between 2008 and 2010 started rejecting JNTU CVs unless college, marks and other relevant details were mentioned. The tenth and twelfth marks actually helped in establishing the credibility of one’s academic orientation. 

Same way if an application shows experience of ten years but employment details mentioned are only for 5-6 years or a gap in education or employment is left unexplained, no recruitment person will have the bandwidth to get the relevant information individually from all the applied candidates at the initial level of screening.

I have talked a lot about how recruiters drop CV. That doesn’t mean that recruiters are only to reject people. Imagine an ‘ Indian Idol ’competition going on and poor three judges have to go through auditions of thousands of people to have top first top twenty five and then the winner. The audition round is more of elimination and finding the champion from top twenty odd people is the selection. Recruitment is no different. In elimination round, with attention span of judge being just 30-60 seconds, one needs to strike the right chord and right node within the given time. There is no second chance. So what is the right chord and node for your candidature?

• Be precise: A two-three sider CV will catch more attention than an eight pager.
• Provide information: Give details about your education, college and experience with relevant dates. For senior profiles, education scores may not matter much but for fresh out of college people, surely it is one of the selection criteria. Do not assume that by hiding, you can get away as all companies will have their policies around.
•  Do not hide information: Breaks between two jobs are better admitted than left unaddressed.
•  Do not twist information: In cases where you have worked in an organization for a month or two only, do not try to merge the experience to show stability in your career. If found later on in background verification process, be sure you will lose the job because of discrepancy.
• Provide relevant information: Provide information about your current job and responsibilities. As you progress in your career, your recent jobs shall have more weightage on your CV and previous ones shall shrink appropriately.
• Basic personal information is needed: Contact information, date of birth, passport status are always helpful.
• Do not copy: Even if your friend and you are working in same project, present differently. Your CV is reflection of your style of presenting the facts. Do not copy.
• Claim what you have done: A false claim can fall flat in interview and it will be worse than not having the tall claims.

In short, keep it simple and be honest.

View: Indian HR are true Hindus

Disclaimer: 

The article is my personal view and is not with an intent to hurt any religious sentiments. My apologies if I have hurt someone.

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Hindu religion is full of gestures based on scientific principles. Be it saying namaste by pressing your palm against each other or having your food while sitting on ground. In traditional south Indian Brahmin community, one has to perform alternate nostril breathing before doing sandhya aarati. They all have scientific bases like pressing the pressure point, most conducive position for digestion and calming down all day stress in the evening. However, all these scientific practices have been reduced to rituals of just raising the hand or just just touching your nostrils due to "lack of time" as people moved to modernism. As the short hand religious practices got transferred to newer generations, it became 'lack of time' as well as lack of knowledge for them as they aped the ritual and further condensed it to its nano-ism. 

In India, Human Resource function I will say, is closest to modern day practice of Hndu religion. We started few years ago from all scientific approach but we ended up doing ritualistic practice. We could also recollect that when Indian IT was growing, how a group of dynamic HR people laid down the foundation for some best HR policies and practices for their respective companies. But with time, all were diluted and lost. 

Almost in every field of HR, we can see a dilution of the original principle but to begin with, it is performance management. Performance management has the objective of developing people and having a periodic career counselling. However, what happens is KRA setting in retrospect. Most companies have their employees setting up their goal in retrospect at the end of the appraisal period when the time of evaluation is near. I need not discuss the effectiveness of such appraisal. 

Recruitment has a vital component of HR interview which is suppose to be a stress interview assessing the personality and job fit of the person. However, once business team has evaluated the required skills, most of the HR interviews become ritualistic just discussing salary expectations. 

One of the buzz word in HR is employee engagement but if you survey thirty HR professional (minimum number to have a statistically valid sample) who have spent 3-6 years in the corporate, and ask them to mention top two employee engagement activity they need to perform. At least 50 percent will mention at least one employee entertainment activity as the top two employee engagement activity they will perform. Among the daily rituals, when did they get mixed up, no body knows.  A team outing or a 'fun friday' event will be surely mentioned while voting for top two employee engagement practice. Career discussion with manager or skip level manager will always be secondary. 

Compensation is derived more out of peer pressure than actually trying to fit in Maslow's theory of needs. There is a rush to out number the other. Lot of times I have seen organizations driving 'Fish Philosophy', Kanban, Kaisen, Performance culture etc. without even understanding what it is and whether it will suit the organization needs. The number of examples for the baseless activities can be infinite. However, the crux remains the same that somewhere, the scientific principles behind HR initiatives are getting lost in recent HR practices. The deeper impact is that despite companies spending so much on employee;s compensation and engagement amenities like food, juices and pool tables, they still have discontented employees. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why HR are unable to have a strong say in business meetings as they have not given the required ROI to the business. I personally know lot of mid-sized organizations who have minimum HR interventions at a strategic level. This situation has come up because we have blindly aped the HR practices from our HR ancestors of western countries and Japan without understanding their social system and philosophy. More over we tried to derive a quick fix approach out of the practice and hence missed out entirely on the ground work.  Where will HR go from here, no body knows but some of the HR folks surely need to take the responsibility of bringing the ritualistic HR back to being a scientific one. 

Reference

http://www.think69.com/20-amazing-scientific-reasons-behind-hindu-traditions

Paradoxical behavour by HR Managers

The must have paradoxical image for a Human Resource Manager is very interesting and hazy thing to discuss. I can think of top three traits where the nebulous aura of HR is more evident but I am sure that there will at least half a dozen more. Anyways, here are my top three. 

As head of HR for a small to mid size firm, I was busy drafting the code of conduct for the company. A person from marketing team who sits next to me and works closely with me on internal branding, came and tapped my shoulder. I looked up. She was almost in tears and I knew that she has come out from a KRA discussion meeting with her new boss. She looked at me. Tears rolled down as she picked up a post-it from my desk and wrote “I am resigning”. I read and said without any emotion,”kal aana. Kal baat karenge. Ghar jao”(Come tomorrow. We will speak tomorrow. Go home). She was not expecting this from me. A HR person is supposed to be an agony aunt (In my case -agony uncle)!! I managed to infuriate her to an extent as I continued with my work. Ten minutes later she tapped me again but this time for a cup of çhai. I said “Chai ke liye ok, but if you want to discuss, kal aana” (I will come for a cup of tea but if you want to discuss, come tomorrow). Anyways, we had tea without any discussion. Next day she came and said, “I was anxious and irritated when I went back yesterday. But now I am feeling fine. Let me see how much growth the new KRAs give me over next six months. I will take a call accordingly.” Voila! My job was done. Previous day no matter how hard I would have tried, she would not have absorbed any of my HR gyan. Today it is automatically resolved. As per my guess and some rational estimate, two-three out of five problems HR has to hear, need not be responded. I am not saying that HR need not be responsive but these situations need to be assessed before jumping into solution mode. The moment you try to give immediate solution, people stop exercising their brain and rationale and expect you to fix the problem for you. The worst is, most of the solution they seek is escalation against manager since they are source of most problems (actual or perceived). Hence, somewhere HR needs to have show some indifference with proper judgement. Ek nanhi si jaan kya kya solve karega??

HR also needs to mingle around with people and create guptchars around in different teams. Yet another contradiction from what and how HR shall be. HR shall not promote any gossip flowing in. But to know the real pulse, you need to have your khabris working. Sometimes, some really deep buried skeletons can be unearthed as gossips flow to the HR.  That is why often HR people are noticed teasing or joking with other people from different teams and going out for a smoke or drink with them. Needless to add, the balance is important as reputation is at stake. If the mingling doesnt yield any information, HR has a dagger of being tagged 'gossip monger'or 'time waste conversationist' hanging on his head. 

Last but surely not the least, I will refer to legendary poet T.S Eliot’s great poem ‘Macavity the mystery cat’ here. HR needs to be something like the poet description of the legendary villain.

His brow is deeply lined with thought,

his head is highly domed;

His coat is dusty from neglect,

his whiskers are uncombed.

He sways his head from side to side,

with movements like a snake;

And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

In short, have a disguise-look absent but be present. Ah! The fine balance part again. You shall not pretend to be so absent that you actually become absent. Tough call but yes that is the fact. You need to be a silent observer. Looking at all possible small and big happening around, giving no reaction till time is right and ripe. Hey, I sound like I am teaching HR to behave like king cobra! HR and Cobra !! Gosh ! But yes, with the fine balance during execution, wait and watch is must for the HR person. Sometimes haste can only give you a fraction of the truth and we all know that most part of bergs are underwater and are capable of sinking the unsinkable leviathan like Titanic. 

So guys- behave the way you should not !