HR Diaries

  [A] Introduction:   I have come across two burning issues, as far as the recruitment and selection are concerned in India. There are a lot of opinions (misconceptions) and strong emotions associated with the areas or practices like CTC, take home salary, bond in the jobs, regarding the morality and legality of the same. In this blog post, I will try to create an awareness regarding these practices, and hopefully, will empower the reader to arrive at his/her own conclusion. [B] What is CTC?:   CTC stands for Cost to the Company. It includes all the direct and indirect expenditures, that a company incurs on a particular employee. For example, basic salary, various allowances etc. Here is one example from Wikipedia: In other simple words, it is the total amount that an employer spends on an employee. Ideally, it includes everything, something as small as, the bill of a cup of tea, that an employee will receive, while traveling as a part of the job.  Some com...

    if you are a young start up, here are some inputs for selecting candidates These are long term measures. Hire good consultants if you can't manage. 1. Thoroughly check background. Talk to the company where the student did internships in UG/PG. 2. Thoroughly check Instagram and LinkedIn profiles and dig out things likes comments, posts, photographs etc. 3. Try to talk to the placement team of college for each identified candidate. 4. Use a lot of behavioral questions in an interview. They are good at digging out the hidden aspects of candidate's real job behavior. 5. Not easy, but check credit history, if possible. 6. Enter the name of the student in Google and see what comes out. 7. Position your company as one of the best companies to work for in campuses of your choice. 8. Selecting a candidate is like investment. You take risk and hope he will perform well. But, there is always a risk reward ratio at play. So avoid taking blind risk i.e. only considering his talent will...

 Once upon a time, there was a company. It was a very good company and was flourishing well. The employees were happy in general. Mitresh was an officer level employee in this company. He was with the company for more than a decade. His performance record was good. His boss was also very happy with his attitude and performance.  But then every good story gets a twist. A twist in the tale. Mitresh was trying for a PR of a foreign company. He got it! But the condition to convert that offer for PR into actual PR was that Mritesh was required to fly to that country the very next month, along with his family, which, in his case, included his 5 month old pregnant wife.  The problem in front of Mitreh was that he had not informed his employer about this. And, as per the terms of the service, he was required to serve three years' bond before leaving the job. Or, he would have to pay three years' salary, which was unaffordable to him. Mritesh was really in a big trouble. He decide...

   [A] Introduction: It is not possible to succeed in everything one does. The same applies to the employment / job interviews. And as we already know, the failures contribution to our learning is immense. Fundamentally, it is a tacit form of learning. The successful people convert it into the explicitly form of learning. This article gives out some tricks and tips, that you help the job seekers (primarily freshers) can use to learn from their mistakes in GD/PI. [B] The steps to learn from the interviews you could not crack: 1. Write down everything right after the interview: The first thing you need to do is to write down everything right after the interview. The memory is generally fresh on the day of interview and it is important to put the whole experience, like how you entered the room, how you greeted the panel, what types of questions were asked, and what types of answers you gave, what dress did you wear, how was your body language (in your own eyes) etc. Make sure to ...

  [A] Moonlighting - What is this?, What is it NOT? It is nothing but doing many jobs. But, the primary employers do not know about it. Even before Covid19, many employers, particularly in IT industry, would be working for two employers. But, in those days, most employees would disclose this to their primary employer. And the primary employer would not mind it, as long as the concerned employee were using his or her own resources to do that second job, including time and laptop. Plus, of course, there should be no conflict of interest in that. But, with work from home becoming a new normal, the employees started working for two more more employers, during the same working hours, using the same laptop. And, this is where, the problem is. A lot of employers like Wipro and Infosys view it as the practice, that leads to conflict of interest.  Moonlighting is NOT side hustle or a side gig. While moon lighting is generally about full time or a part time job for another employer duri...

 The list is simple: 1. There should be a proper job description and job specification available, for each and every post, you want to fill. The students want exact clarity about the nature of work, the content of work, the conditions of work as well as the skills they will have to deploy to perform the job. Things like location, working hours, reporting relationships, any specific skills requirements, should also be a part of the job description. Many online tools are available for writing job description. For example:  O*NET OnLine (onetonline.org) Also avoid selling dreams! Offer a "realistic job preview" and do share the hardships that will have to be faced by the candidate, during the course of the work.  If you are not sure how to price each job (i.e. how much you should pay for each job), you can use the wonderful portal:  Salary in India, Salary Survey, Minimum Wage in India - Paycheck.in  and find out the salaries, that are paid to different types of pr...

  [A] BACKGROUND: CV writing has been traditionally taught in B.Com, BBA and MBA courses, where the focus is on the format, spelling errors, number of pages, content to be included into the CV etc. The focus is on helping a student write "one perfect CV" that s/he can use for all the jobs, to which, s/he will apply. It is a kind of "one size fits all" approach, where the CV, once prepared, typically in a word file, may just need to be revised, whenever the concerned person adds any qualification  experience. But then, things have changed. Many companies receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of CVs, per month, which are unsolicited, at times. No manager has time to scan through all these CVs. Hence, the companies have started using Applicant Tracking Software (ATS), which find "the right" CV for each job.  [B] What is an Applicant Tracking System?: In simple terms, an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), is a software that scans through the CVs to look for ...

 Acknowledgement: I thank my former colleague and friend, (Prof) Mr. Marmik Soni, who provided the idea to write a blog post on this topic. LinkedIn has many features, that may seemingly help you to find a job or advance your career. It keeps adding new features too. One such feature is "Open to Work" badge that you can activate on LinkedIn. There are many ways to know how it works, so my focus here is not much on the functionality of this feature. Rather, this feature, which prima facie looks to be very helpful to a job seeker, may also have dark sides, which might not be easily noticed. So, here are observations on keeping "Open to Work" badge on. Observations: 1. Whenever you send an invitation to connect to any senior manager or an entrepreneur, he/she will accept it or reject it, after viewing your profile. The biggest catch is here. If your "Open to Work" badge is visible, the invitees might think that your sole purpose to connect to them is to seek ...