Ugly Is In, Is It ??

That could be the only reason why job advertisement and your website's career page seem to be competing for "who's uglier contest".

If I was running a coaching class on how to write ugly ads, I would just open some job sites and give my students unlimited case studies. Now don't get upset, why do you do that?

Okay, now you'd rush to edit those job ads, thats yet another eyewash, we just don't get it. Let me tell you one last time why all this is important.

Remember the corner "Sugarcane Juice Vendor", he doesn't have a brand, still he gets customers - but he won't get employees easily. Thats right, today's Consumer is far more forgiving and experimental, It is highly likely to try you out even if you don't have a brand. But expect this from a prospective employee and you're straight out from under the rocks, world has changed since then my sleeping beauty :), Yes, Welcome to the "War for Talent" days. You need a brand to hire not to sell anymore.

Yes, I have heard that before, the story of you being a Small Enterprise and that SMEs don't build Brands, well, tell this to your receptionist not me. But just in case you asked how?

 

Here is how:

  • Dump anyone who writes bad, at least the one who writes ugly ads. How to find if its ugly? Just read it yourself or delegate it to kids.
  • Always know what’s good about your Industry, about your Company, about your City, about your Office Location, about inside the Office. Write it down, distribute to your team freely. Sometime ask them back if they remember. Check if they can write it down.
  • Immediately go to Career link on your website and read it. Approve all leave requests before that or else poor team members will suffer from your bad mood. Don't have a Website? I am sorry I bothered you, carry on sleeping.
  • Redoing Career Page content isn't tough if you are ready with point no.2 above. Just write yourself or call the kids again. Don't give it to ad agencies or another 3 months will go. Pour your heart out on Career Page, this is the only useful page on your Website. You can write about "Why us", "Who is already here", "Who are mostly hired" and "How to apply". Put your mobile number there, you're
    not a secret agent.
  • You copied your way through Engineering, do some copying here, read around, go to Websites that you like and get inspired, won't hurt.
  • Invest sometime, you didn't start this business to save money did ya? Build Business, Spend, Create something you'll feel proud about, something people will refer around and trust me they do. Clients refer, employees refer, the one's you interview refer, but you've got to make it easy. Attract Man.


    • By 2016 there would be 156 million jobs available to some 70 million employable people, everyone will have choice of work, who will work for you? Hello! this is 2011 :)

    Vision Consultant? Again?

    So the 100th consultant who met you recently spoke about vision, mission ya. And you agreed 100th time how much you need one, well its fail proof actually.  

    Ever wondered why it is so difficult to articulate vision, mission and then stick to it for long. If you' have made a website for yourself ever, you know it partly, as making a website is equally difficult. Most of the time we outgrow our own vision pretty fast, or it alters or we lose steam.

    But the good news is that your team members are more forgiving than you think. They don't much care about your visions that change with every new consultant passing by. On vision, teams are happy that you have one and that consultants consume most of your time.

    Instead, they worry about your value system, no not the one you talk about, but the ones they see you practicing. Most part of work experience for professionals is effected less by what you declare but more by how management behaves. And behaviors are highly influenced by values. Purists can argue that Vision leads to values, well may be, but values can also stand on their own. To live values, vision is not an essential condition, trust me its good news, makes things simple.

    Try this, no matter what your vision is or mission is, think about 5 things that you call your values, personal extendable to the enterprise you are creating. Thats how you take decisions, thats your "How" part of achieving whatever you are set for. Since values are close guides for decision making, team can use this clarity very effectively in their day to day work life. Over time, it will bring consistency in your manager's decisions and you'll see less normalizations happening.

    So starting point is values. And you can forever with them.

    Alone and Together - distributed work model

    May be to plugHR it came naturally, I realized only through other's observations that our corporate team wasn't really sitting close. I brave Mumbai, our India operations Head stays firm in the seat of power at New Delhi, advocacy manager hangs down south in Hyderabad and Head of Brand shuttles through Mumbai, Kolkata and New York.

    It works really well for us and having worked like this for over three years now, I am tempted to share it as a well tested model. Rather than giving it a fancy jargon that could then do the rounds in HR circles like omnipresent beblades, I've called it "Alone & Together" model. Let me jump straight to the merits.

    The A&T (thats just the short form, not a jargon...come on...) model is based on the premise that being alone allows for higher concentration, flexibility & creativity to be deployed at work, apart from getting less disturbed by the presence of others. Moreover, one is less likely to get drawn into unplanned operational mundanity (overlook the vocab invention). Members structure routine and work styles the way it works best for them and each achieves more.

    Does that make the team any less together, naaah. With all kind of things popping up the lappi, you can't be more closer. Skype, Twitter, Facebook, BB messenger make sure that I can sense team members facial expressions, count their coffees and sometime even wake them up from afternoon siesta. We don't even miss meetings (the favorite corporate passtime), thanks to sabsebolo.com and the likes.

    Its amazing to realize how some of these tools have made us all pretty much at work almost always and being at a particular place (erstwhile known as office) to be able to begin work has become distant memory. Did I say begin work? Well can't say even that exists anymore, the ends have blurred, work and life both simulcast around but for the time we sleep.

    But that was before Inception became so believable ..... ahh, let me catch sleep while lines blur further... you got the model right?

    Tagged Corporate HR Human resources Leadership Management Organization Performance Management Training Workplace plugHR

    Proof of Performance Intention

    Last month plugHR made a significant shift towards its performance preparedness. Taking leaf from Military, plugHR made some items as "issue items" in Project Manager inventory, a step that takes plugHR Managers on a different level on day one at work. It took managers a week to digest the move (possibly HR lived without them for too long) but the benefits are for all to see now.

    Ofcourse these steps are simple, almost natural to a large professional population, taking it to HR was one move though. So if the idea to work at plugHR crosses your mind, here's a quick list of things you'd be expected to be ready with.

    1. plugHR asks you whether you use a mobile phone with push mail facility (blackberry or their cheaper counterparts). If you don't or don't intend to, we gladly pay for your coffee and end the discussion there. In plugHR language, you are not even ready to perform even at intention level, hence we save ourselves from your long stories of imaginative bravado. Do we provide you with such phones? Of course not, just the way we don't buy you clothes, or shoes or laptops. If you don't own either of these, you were not thinking of working anyways.

    2. We push lot of learning content to our team through webinars and other interactive medium that requires laptops, headphones, speakers, ability to put them together and login into interactive sessions. Here we do give you one training considering there are still business schools in India that don't give a damn to technology.

    3. We use online project management tools off the cloud and you won't run a day if you can't walk in the clouds. Again we do run a demo, but running you do. Lot of it is simple, my 7 year old daughter runs some of them well, but you need to get over the freeze.

    This is not an exhaustive list but this states the point that I am trying to make. For a professional, preparedness matters and we check for that. We treat your selection of tools as a Proof of Performance Intention. If you come with it, we'll ensure that you perform and grow and grow others and build organizations. Thats what HR is all about isn't it?

    To check whether you fit at plugHR or not, write in prashant@plughr.com

    Tagged HR Hiring India Jobs Organization Organization culture Performance Management