The Global Talent Crunch

You are the manager of a Global organization and are seeing a huge traction in new business opportunities for your organization as a whole . The proactive person you are, you want hire the best people in the business and build the team and the processes so that when the time comes, you are ready to grab the largest share of the opportunity pie. So you hand out a job description to the company HR manager/Recruiter asking him to hire the "best" available talent in the market.

The recruiter puts out the job postings in the local and national Newpapers(the conventional way), searches for profiles matching the requirement in jobsites like Monster.com, Naukri , Time jobs(Web 1.0 way) and finally even conducts a Virtual job fair on Secondlife.com (the web 2.0 way). And the end of it, you are handed out a set of resumes which more or less matches what you need. You interview a few of them, junk a few and finally put out an offer for a select few with joining Date :DD-MON-YYYY.

Come DD-MON-YYYY, out of the P number of people you offered the job to, only one of them joins the organization with the remaining P-1 being what is called as "no-shows". You as the manager had planned out the on boarding for P people ( Hell even the lunch table for P people was booked ) and are frustrated that P-1 people did not join your team . You reprimand the HR manager for not doing his job well and set him a deadline of having the P-1 people on-board by end of this week !!!. The poor HR manager panics and in turn takes his recruiting team to task for not having followed up with the potential new hires.

Finally what does the helpless Recruiter do ? Damned as he is,he starts contacting the remaining P-1 people and threatens them with Dire consequences like blacklisting,abuses thems and talks to them in a very unprofessional way while coaxing them to join the organization at the earliest. Do you think the any of the p-1 people will ever join your global company ? Not in their life !!. The recruiter is the one point contact for the new hires to understand the work culture and environment of the company and any sane job seeker would not like to join an organization which has a rude and unempathetic HR team.

So my dear Recruiter and the HR team, while I do understand your frustration, I believe you need to come to terms with the fact that good talent in today's booming times indeed scarce and this game of "no-shows" is going to continue for sometime to come . The Reality today is that we have a set of customers who are expecting innovations in product development and service delivery every single day, but unfortunately we do not have the set of people with the skillsets to deliver these innovations to the customers !!. So you have companies poaching people from each other and offering big carrots for hiring the "right" people. But what do you do if the "right" people are not available ? Afterall you have critical Client deadlines to meet.

Well the need of the hour is Re-training the existing human capital to suit the new world business innovations while at the same time hiring people who may not have the skills you require but have the smarts to learn the business skills you need and deliver the required Customer focussed solution. Easier said than done but it is always better than threatening potential new employees at Knifepoint.

PS : This threaten/abuse incident is true story and happened with one of the Big Four Audit Consulting Firms(Take a guess ,which one) recently when my cousin was looking for a job-switch. Do you think you and me ever join this organization ?

Liberalise Education ...

A world reowned Finance Educational Institute whose degree/qualification is recognized worldwide raises objection to another Institution using it's trademarked Degree Name . The Latter institute as a survival tactic claims that the world venerated institute is illegally offering the course in the Country and obtains a Court Order restricting the International Institute from offering the course.Where e Well I am talking of the CFA charter which initially raised objection to ICFAI using the CFA trademark name. So ICFAI turned the table on CFA and asked AICTE( which regulates the Technical education standards in India) to ban CFA from conducting the charter's Examination till further notice as the CFA charter does not have the AICTE approval. AICTE agrees with ICFAI although it is not sure if the CFA degree comes under it's purview and imposes a ban leaving about 2000 students in lurch.

How Sad !! . The CFA is one of the world's largest Financial Chartered body and it's degree is recognized everywhere in the world. In fact the top honchos in many of the Investment Banks and Equity Research firms in India and world are CFAs.And given that India today is opening all the sectors for Foreign Direct Investments and is allowing domestic companies to invest in Hitherto non existent sectors like organized Retail, Micro Finance etc., I wonder why education is being left out.

I am not saying that the government has not done anything but we still have a long way to go. Take for example the Rai University. It is a Private autonomous University which offers all kind of courses. While I can't vouch for Rai's Quality, I know for sure that it will not have many takers in the market . The reason? It is not recognized by UGC ( the Archiac University Grant's Commission) implying that a Undergraduate from Rai University cannot do a Post graduation in any other University in India. ( I heard that Eventually Rai got an Affilation with other Indian university but never a Full university Status)

While I am not vouching for a Free for all pass to create universities, I would like to see something like TRAI(Telecom REgulatory Authority of India) rule over the University System in India and allow other private universities to operate. Remember what liberal educations policy has done to the Singapore ? Today it has become an educational hub of Asia with likes of Insead, France and University of Chicago(Graduate School of Business) having Asia campuses in Singapore . Wouldn't you as an Indian not like to have Stanford University to open it's Asia Campus in Bangalore, India ?

That would be wonderful and will surely give the likes of ISB,IIMs competition on one hand while providing the Indians the opporunity to get world class management Education without having to cross the Atlantic ocean. Hope the day comes pretty soon. Amen.

Organizational Fundas :X,Y and Z

Company X : The company wants to recruit only the best in class people in order to bring out the top of the breed solutions to manage businesses and clients. So the company only hires those who have "consistent" Academic performance right from school . A lot of them outside (and even inside) the organization X scoff at this eligiblity criteria and say this is crap and education does not matter in the real world and it is the experience and skills that matter

Company Y : The outside people who criticize the company X includes people working in this organization. This company believes in hiring for skills and attitude and cares a damn about the educational qualifications, the reputation of the school/college.The only thing it looks for is : Can this person work for Project A which upcoming and is in urgent need for resources.

Now person Z joins company Y from Company X( having been recruited by X based on the "stringent" conditions) thinking that probably the "outside" people are right and all that one needs is the right skills. (Can't blame Z . The grass always appears greener on the other side).

6 months into company Y, Z realizes the importance of what X is doing. X by virtue of recruiting consistent individuals( the criteria though is debatable) ensures that it has a homogenous set of people who are willing to work hard for success thereby reducing the managerial overheads. MORE importantly Z realizes that X company has a vision , has leaders whose foot steps can followed to move up the value chain. This is because the people whom X recruited as consistent performers are the ones who have turned out to be effective leaders and are willing learn from anyone and anybody to succeed against all obstacles. ( in short they are the fire in the belly kind of guys ).

Why is Z thinking of all this ? Well, Y company has a bunch of experienced folks who call themselves leaders and managers and are trying to lead the way. Unfortunately there is no vision, no direction and no proactive future planning. The basic tenet a leader must have is the ability to think ahead and proactively forsee the problems. Alas.. the leaders of Y do not have any of this and even the middle management starts thinking .time to move on...... .This leaves Z thinking Should I move back to X ???

PS : X is easily recognizable, Y and Z are confidential for obvious reasons.

Smart Work???

Offlate there is has been a lot of debate between my colleagues on the Virtues of Smart work and Hard work. Simply put smart "work" is the ability to do the some work with the minimum efforts Vis a vis hard work .. which usually implies that ur putting ur arse out to achieve some results. But somehow this debate on Smart work veered to yet another discussion ........ Picture this .. I am assigned some work to do which is really new to be me .. and I will learn a lot from doing this work ......But I instead of doing the Work .. I "smartly" push this work to another colleague of mine who knows this work better and will complete the same work faster than me. Now the Question is this Smart work ?? Well DEpends on perpective ( my favourite ).

For if I look from my angle .. I have got the work done at the best Possible place and by the best person there by enchancing my own people management skills and improving my companies 's efficiency... Really ? Someone else will ask "did'nt you miss the chance to learn something new here ?".I mean people management is imperative and perhaps the most important skill one needs to learn..... but in doing this .. haven't you missed the chance to learn some new Technology or some new workcycle process?

This is exactly the Predicament which say a new CEO of a company faces. Do I look take a long term view and let my people add "real" value and bring a steady rate of Growth or else Do I take a Short term view and ask people to produce results ASAP and bring out a Stellar quarterly result?.

In the end , guess there is a thin line of Difference between the Smart work and hard work and I truely believe that the way to should be work hard but smartly :)

Management Talk!!!

Have you ever heard the CEO/EVP/VP of a company talk without using the following words: Streagy, Focus, Differentiation, go to Market, traction and so on and so forth. You bet not. Ask any question to them.. be it something as simple as "When is my next salary hike ?"..... which can answered pretty straight forwardly "6 months or 1 month "

but you get a 5 min lecture. He (or she I am not gender baised here ) tells the history( and geography) of the whole HR and compensation policy to us and explains the hike policy and goes on and on ....... until you forget the question you asked .......but luckily managers are a smart genre. they remind you of the question saying " but yes to answer your question of When the hike will happen"........ I think we will be doing it in the next 1 month!!!!!!! phew .. .thank you sir for ur prompt reply !!!!

But guess this is a part of the job for a manager .. talking and delivering the polished stuff.. the unpolished stuff may not b digestible by us .....something like saying " The HR policy makers have resigned and we are searching for a new HR head to formulate the hike policy" ......and being an aspiring manager .. I think I need to polish my polishing skills ...... :) so off I am to a Soft skills training institute

Paradox of Thrift : Macroeconomics

While each of us may have different to save money out of our regular income ( typically salary for the employees, monthly profits for neighbour kirana store and so on) , it is no doubt the primary reason is to secure our future against unforseen events. and Most of us save money in the form of Stocks, bonds,NSCs and of course some money is stored in banks etc for the lure of interests ....Have you ever wondered wat happens to the money which stashed in these bonds and NSCs and banks ( leaving aside stocks as they fall under different category of Risk driven savings)

While here starts the intriguing story of the money. The money you save in the banks is the money which is used by banks to lend out to investors and industrialist. The same money is used by the government to invest and pay for short term debts !!!!!!! ...The basis assumption of course is that of all the money which is kept by individual investors in banks, everybody will not withdraw the cash in one go. If that happens ( remember ICICI bank going bankrupt rumour a couple of yrs back) ....... then the banks are in for a liquidity crises and will run out of cash to pay it's own employees.

Now what happens if the ordinary people don't save and instead spend all the money which they get from regular income ? ..This is a really good ecomomic sign and helps the economy become a demand market and increases growth rate. At the same time, it implies that this growth cannot be funded with the domestic investments and for growth we will need to be now dependent on External Inflows ( the FDIs ) ........So one hand, less savings is better for the economy .. on the other hand it makes the country dependent on external flows to fund this growth ..........( the classic is that of the US economy ) This is commonly known as the "paradox of Thrift !!!!!!!!!"...

PS : Sorry if I am sounding like a economic prof ...